The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1887-04-21


of God; some of them acquaintance,
some business associates, yes, perhaps
some members of your own family were
baptized by sprinkling or immersion.
Christian people thought of you and they
called at your store, but you were out on
business. They stopped at your house;
you had gone around to spend the even
ing They sent kindly message 10 you;
somehow, by accident, you did not get it.
The lifeboat of the Gospel swept through
the surf and everybody seemed to get in
but you. Every thing seemed to escape
you.
One touch of personal sympathy would
have pushed you into the kingdom of God.
When on communion day your friends
went in and your sons and daughters
went into the church, you buried your
face in your handkerchief and sobbed:
"Why am left out? Everybody seems
to get saved but me. No man cares for
my soul"
Hearken to a revelation have to make
1t is startling statement. 1t will so sur
prise You that must prove it as ! go on.
Instead of this total Indifference to all
about you in regard to your soul, have
to tell you that heaven, earth and
he'll are after your immortal
spirit-earth to cheat it, hell to
destroy it, Heaven to redeem it. Although
you may be a stranger to the Christians
in this house, their faces would glow and
their hearts would bound if they saw you
make one step Heavenward. So intricate
and far-reaching is this web of sympathy,
that could by one word rouse great
many prayers in your behalf. No one
care for your soull Why, one signal of
distress on your part would thrill this
audience with holy excitement. If boat
in any harbor should get in distress, from
the men-of-war, and from the sloop, and
from the steamers, the flying paddles
would pull to the rescue. And if now you
would lift one signal of distress, all these
voyagers of eternity would bear down to-
ward you and bring you relief.
But no. You are like a ship on fire at
sea. They keep the matches down, and
the captain is frenzied, and he gives or
ders that no one hail the passing ships
He says:
II Shall either land this vessel in Ham
burg or on the bottom of the ocean, and 1
dent care which,
Yonder is a ship of the White Star Line
passing. Yonder one on the National
Line. YOnder one of the Cunard Line.
Yonder one of the Inman Line. But they
know not there is any calamity happening
on that one vessel. Oh! if the captain
would only put his trumpet to his lip and
cry out:
slower your boats! Bear down this
way We are burning up! Firel Fret"
No. No. No signal IS given. If that
vessel perishes, having hailed no one,
whose fault will it bea Will it be the
fault of the ship that hid its calamity, or
will it be the fault of the vessel that,
passing on the high seas, would have been
glad to furnish relief if it had been only
askeda In other words, my brother, if
you miss Hea rem it will be your own fault
No one care for your soul! Why, in all
the ages there have been men whose en-
tire business was soul-saving. In this
work Munson wentdown under the knives
OF the cannibals whom he had come to
save, and Robert McCheyne preached him.
self to death by thirty years of age, and
John Bunyan was thrown into a dungeon
in Bedfordshire, and Jehudi Ashman
endured all the malarias of the African
Jungle; and there are hundreds and thou
sands OF Christian men and women now
who are praying, tolling, preaching, liv-
ing, dying to save souls
No one care for your souli Have you
heard how Christ feels about it? I know
it was only five or six miles from Bethle-
hem to Calvary = the birthplace and
death-place of Christ-but who can tell
how many miles it was from the Manager
to the thronel How many miles down,
how many miles back again? The place
of his departure was the focus of all
splendor and pomp. All the thrones fac
ing his throne. His name the chorus in
every song and the inscription on every
banner. His landing place cat
tie pen, malodorous with unwash-
ed brutes, and dogs growing in
and out of the stable Born of a weary
mother, who had journeyed eighty miles
in severe unhealth that she might find the
right place for the Lords nativitv-born,
not as other princes, under the flash of a
chandelier, but under lantern swung by
rope to the roof of the barn.
In that place Christ started to save YOU.
Your name, your face, your time, your
eternity, in Christs mind Sometimes
travelling on mule's-bac1 to escape old
Herod's massacre, sometimes Attempting
nervous sleep on the chilly hillside, some
times earning his breakfast by the car
pentry of pillow. In Quarantania
the stones of the field, by their shape and
color, looking like the loaves of bre ad,
tantalizing his hunger. Yet all the time
keeping on after you. With drenched
coat, treading the surf of Genessaret;
howled after by blood-thirstv mob; de-
nounced as drunkard; mourning over a
doomed city, while others shouted at the
sight OF the shimmering towers. All the
time coming on and coming on to say Q
you.
Indicted as being traitor against gov.
eminent, perjured witnesses swearin q
their souls away to insure his butchery.
logged, spit on, slapped in the face, and
then hoisted on rough lumber, in tho sight
OF earth, and Heaven, and hell, to purchase
your eternal emancipation. From the
first infant step to the last step of man.
hood on the sharp spike of Calvary, Jour
ney for you. Oh, how he cared for your
soula By dolorous arithmetic add ND the
stable, the wintry tempest, the midnight
dampness, the abstinence Of forty
days from food, the brutal Sanhedrim, the
heights of Golgotha, across which all the
hatreds of earth and all the furies of hell
charged with their bayonets, and then
dare to say again that no one cares for
your soul
A young man might as well 90 off from
home and give his father and mother no